Page 22 of I'm Not Done with You Yet

11

Nine Years Ago

Oxford, England

I spend the rest of the day avoiding Thalia. When we get back from lunch (I get back from my room, where I spent lunchtime holed up, alternating between pacing like a caged animal and screaming into my pillow), I pick a seat farthest from her and refuse to meet her eye. As soon as classes end, I escape once more into my room. I listen behind the door, my breath coming out rapidly whenever footsteps pound through the hallway. There it is, the click and swing of her door, just a few feet away from mine, might as well be miles. I should go out there and explain—though I’m not sure what I would be explaining, maybe why I’m so warped and jagged? My hand caresses the doorknob.

Laughter.

I freeze. It’s not Thalia’s voice. Then I hear it, Thalia talking, followed by more throaty laughter that turns my hand into a fist. Ani. Ani’s going into Thalia’s room. The room I’d been in lessthan a day ago, where Thalia had touched my bare skin, where we had, at one point, both been undressed. And now it’s being tainted by Ani’s presence. Is she lending Ani an outfit too? I am frothing with jealousy. But no, says a tiny voice of logic, Ani isn’t the kind of girl who needs to borrow another girl’s outfit. Ani’s the kind of girl who would’ve brought her entire wardrobe to Oxford, filling her closet to bursting with expensive silks and leathers. My heart rate slows down for a moment before speeding up again. Because if she’s not here to borrow an outfit, then what the fuck is she here for? What are they doing in Thalia’s room, laughing like that? Are they laughing about me? Laughing about the freak across the hallway?

A few minutes later, Thalia’s door opens again, voices and more laughter flooding the hallway. I press my ear to my door, teeth gritted so hard my jaw threatens to lock, and listen to their receding footsteps. And they’re off on their girls’ night. How could I have been so wrong? How laughable that I should have thought myself worthy of being Thalia’s friend. How quickly I’ve been put back in my place.

By now, I’m half-crazed with hunger and rage and pain. Mom’s voice again:Oh, sweetie, get used to it. You will never belong with these people. We’re the help. Come back and work for Mrs. Crawford’s niece; I hear her baby is a sweetheart, not colicky. It’ll be a good job. Shut up, Mother. Shut the fuck up. I should go out, get some food. But I’ve missed dinnertime at Haygrove Hall, and I don’t really want to wander up and down the streets of Oxford where I might bump into Thalia and Ani and suffer the embarrassed giggles that would come from them—god, look at her, so sad and gross.

Instead, I sit down at my desk and start writing. I slit myself open and let all the darkness pour out onto the keyboard, all ofmy rage and all of my hunger for her. Several times, I type so hard and so fast that my hands, slick with sweat, slip from the keyboard. I keep going, writing like I’m possessed, except it’s not a possession but the opposite of one. An exorcism. I’m only vaguely aware of what I’ve written.

... her beautiful neck, as slim as the stem of a rose about to bloom...

... count her bones, one at the back of her neck, peeking out as she pores over the book...

... the way her face looks as I squeeze the air out of her, panic and ecstasy knotted together. She wants me to do this; she wants me to be the end of her, to be the final thing she sees...

By the time I’m done, I’m barely functional. I load the file onto the virtual classroom and click Send without thinking twice. My mind is buzzing, skittering like the legs of a centipede. I feel drunk again, a disconnect between mind and body, a deep chasm in my core. I slam my laptop shut, slump over to bed, and surrender myself to warped dreams where Thalia alternates between telling me she loves me and laughing cruelly at me.

In the morning, it takes a while for last night’s events to come back to me, and when they do, they float up like noxious bubbles swirling up from a swamp of dead things, bubbling to the surface and popping to release their toxic fumes. Thalia and Ani, laughing as they head out of Thalia’s room, probably arm in arm the way that girls like to walk sometimes, both of them dressed in equally expensive, fashionable clothes. Bare skin and tight jeans. Red lipstick and sensuous perfume. And me, boilingwith hunger and envy, screaming silently in my room. Food. I need food. I shrug on clean clothes, rake a brush through my hair, while blinking blearily in the mirror. Plain Jane. Mediocre in every way. Not ugly, not pretty, just aggressively mediocre.

Thalia doesn’t turn up to breakfast. Neither does Ani, and I picture them both squeezed into Thalia’s bed, undressed, breathing slow, lazy breaths into each other’s hair. I take an extra-vicious bite of my pancake. Pam appears in the doorway, and I wonder for a second if she’ll join me—I half panic, hoping she won’t, but then she sees another student and joins them instead. And then I’m suddenly jealous. Even fucking PAM has someone to sit with, but not me. It seems that making friends is a skill that everyone else has been born with except me. I feel like a fish who doesn’t quite know how to swim and can only stay still until it sinks, slowly, into the deep and the dark, the waters getting increasingly cold as it descends.

We have each other, Mom whispers.

Shut. Up.

I gobble up the rest of my food, satiating at least one of my hungers, and escape from the noise of Haygrove Hall. Pam offers a hesitant smile as I walk past, but I pretend not to see. I don’t know how you’re supposed to respond to half smiles. Are they meant to initiate conversations? I shrug it off and walk out of the building. It’s yet another beautiful morning; I’ve learned that no place else does mornings and evenings quite like Oxford does.

Back in Cali, mornings are ostentatious, the sun bursting over the horizon, Here I am! Everybody up! In Oxford, sunrise and sunsets are far gentler, the sky melting like ice cream from dark to purple, to orange, and then to a dewy haze that lines everything with gold. It’s so beautiful it further enrages me. I wish I could take a knife to it, slice into this perfect moment.There’s just something about perfection that makes me want to defile it. Sometimes, I fantasize going through the museum with a little razor, casually slicing apart priceless canvases as I walk past.

The day’s classes start off with another workshop, this time with the theme of “How to surprise your reader.” When I saw that on the syllabus, I’d snorted out loud because I’d, of course, imagined leaping from behind a bookshelf brandishing a knife. Bet you my reader would be surprised by that.

The weird things that my brain spits out.

I take a seat at the farthest end of the room from the door and studiously bury my head in my notebook, trying to project an air of “Fuck off.” It works; my classmates mill about, chattering among themselves, but none of them try talking to me. I’m glad, truly I am. I sense the shift in the room when Thalia enters, the way the voices stop for a second before they call out to her. How is it possible for to her to ignite such delight from others after just a day? Is this what charisma gets you—instant adoration? But no, I catch snippets of conversation like:

“—checked out that bookshop you mentioned, loved it—”

“—were right about the hot chocolate at Caffè Nero!”

What the hell? How has she had time to give people bookshop and drink recommendations? When we sat on the bus from London to Oxford, she told me she’d never been to Oxford before, that she’s a complete stranger to the city. She’d been so nervous, so sweetly innocent and excited. And now here she is, giving recommendations to English people like she’s the one who’s a local. And I’m pushed further out of the circle, an outsider peering through a window.

I study my notebook so hard that my nose practically touches the page. Fortunately, our teacher arrives and we begin the class.

My relief is short-lived; the teacher, Taylor McKeon (also critically acclaimed, also with fewer than ten reviews on Amazon), perches on her seat and says, “I thought it would be perfect to start today’s class with a workshop session. I read through all of your short scenes, and I found one that I thought would be appropriate for today’s subject matter: Surprising your reader. It’s one by Jane Morgan. Jane?”

It takes a few moments to realize she’s calling my name, and by then, she’s had to say it twice more. Jane. Jane?

I startle back to life, my mind a mad horse, bucking and running wild. What had I handed in that could be appropriate for this? For anything? It comes back in a black rush—last night’s mad raving typed with such ferocity that my fingers could barely keep up with the torrent of words. Something about strangling a young woman. Something about counting her bones. Oh my god.

I finally find my voice. “I don’t think—”

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